waking up and letting go to the sound of angels
by katanafleet
Summary: Swan. Emma. My love. You know how it feels, the darkness? How sometimes it feels like you can breathe again, like the darkness has gone to sleep and for the first time in a long time you can see clearly? Not the clarity of the darkness, but the clarity of your old life? I felt it sometimes, back in those three hundred years. Right now, I can see again.


Emma couldn't stop reliving those last moments.

Right before she drove the sword through his body, as he kissed her desperately, as he whispered _I love you too_ , his cry as Excalibur found its final home.

 _I love you I love you too it's okay._

She hadn't been able to stop crying; not when the gurney holding his body disappeared into the distance; not when her mom forced her to swallow some tequila, claiming it would calm her; not when David sat next to her and just held her and let her cry into his shoulder, cupping his hand around her head and making her feel like his little girl again; not even when Henry had whispered in her ear _we're going to get him back_ before running up to his room.

Because he was gone. Killian Jones, the man who was the closest thing to true love she was ever going to have, was dead. Because she couldn't heal his wound from Excalibur the first time, and because she stabbed him with it the second time.

 _I love you I love you too it's okay._

Finally, the rest of her family had gone to sleep, Henry restlessly, but she couldn't bring herself to even try to comfort him. That probably made her a terrible mother, but she couldn't comfort someone else when she was broken glass.

Emma wandered out of the apartment and into town, clutching his ring. She couldn't stop herself from letting a few more tears streak down her cheeks when she saw a place that reminded her of him: the hallway after their first date where she'd truly realized that she loved him and would never stop loving him, the spot in the street where he had assured her that he would always survive, the table at Granny's where she realized she could allow herself to let him in.

She found herself in front of her house. What was supposed to be _their home_. What could never be theirs, not anymore. Because she had killed the man she loved with all her heart.

Emma fell down onto the couch, tears still falling but silently now. She slowly unclasped the chain on which Liam's ring hung and rolled the ring around in her fingers. This was the ring that Killian had worn for hundreds of years, believing that it had kept him alive, and he had given it to her. Despite everything she'd seen, she didn't truly believe that the ring was magical enough to keep someone alive for three hundred years, but now he was dead and she was left alive to mourn him.

 _I love you I love you too it's okay._

She shifted a bit and heard the telltale crinkle of paper. Emma sat up and looked down at the couch. Behind a cushion was a piece of paper. She slowly pulled it out and read _Emma_ in Killian's beautiful handwriting.

She stared at the paper for one moment and knew exactly what it was. Somehow, this was Killian's goodbye. Nothing could really hurt her more, not now, not even the last words of the man she loved. Slowly, so cautiously, she unfolded the letter and read.

 _Swan. Emma. My love._

 _You know how it feels, the darkness? How sometimes it feels like you can breathe again, like the darkness has gone to sleep and for the first time in a long time you can see clearly? Not the clarity of the darkness, but the clarity of your old life? I felt it sometimes, back in those three hundred years. When Ursula sang, when I found Milah's paintings, when I read one of Liam's old books, when I met you._

 _Right now, I can see again._

 _I'm sitting on the couch in your home, writing this. You're lying next to me, sleeping restlessly after Zelena put you to sleep and I carried you here. The witch is gone now, to find her child, and we're alone._

 _This was supposed to be our home, Emma. I don't think you know that Henry found the newspaper with the picture of this house. I was focused on a home not far from your parents', and that one seemed like a good house. I only glanced at the picture before Henry read the details of this home to me, and I knew it was perfect for you from the first sentence._

 _Since I met you, loved you, I have had a dream for us. A vision I haven't been able to shake since Neverland. And I saw this house as being part of that dream._

 _This was supposed to be the place we could be together, the place we could have a family. This was going to be the place we went right after I asked you to marry me. Here we would help Henry become the good man I could never achieve; we would raise our children, at least one boy and a girl. We would live out our days together._

 _For so long, that has been all I wanted of life._

 _Foolish dreams now, I suppose._

 _Ironic, isn't it, Swan, that I'm sitting in the house your son and I chose for us and telling you to move on. But you must, my love. You have to let me go. Please, find your happy ending with your family. Don't rebuild those walls._

 _You, my love, you can do what no other Dark One has done before. You can defeat the darkness. You can have the courage to destroy it and me, to keep living, to move on. And I forgive you._

 _I can feel the darkness swirling up again. I am so very grateful for this time to tell you everything. For what I'm about to do, what the darkness commands me to do, what I am going to do without regret—I am so very sorry._

 _I love you. I have always loved you. And I'll love you until my last breath._

 _I'm yours, always, Emma._

 _Killian Jones._

Emma finished the letter and folded it again. Suddenly, she couldn't cry anymore; it was like Killian's letter had been the plug on her tear ducts and emotions.

She kissed the letter briefly and tucked it into her jacket pocket. She laid back on the couch, rubbing the ring without thought save _Killian_. She stared at the ceiling.

He had loved her so much more than she had ever known.

Now she could only stare at the ceiling and hold the ring he'd given her and wish so hard that all of this was a dream, that he'd be skipping into the room to pull her off the couch and dance her around, to kiss her and hold her like he was never letting go, to lead her outside to play with Henry and the other children—

She heard something, a whisper.

Her imagination, which was filling out what their children would have looked like, stopped its wildness.

The whisper was the dagger. And her mind, even as she ran outside and to her car to find Gold, started her plan.

She was going to get him back.


End file.
